Orienteering Sunday

On Sunday we trudged through bogs and forests in search of treats as part of the St. John's Orienteering Club's Halloween Trick or Treat Meet!  

The event took place at Butter Pot Provincial Park, 30 minutes from St. John’s. We carpooled there with our friends, Rebecca and Piers, arriving right before the meet started at 12:30 pm. Driving into the parking lot past the country country ski lodge we were met by quite a few people, most of them wearing some version of camo.

We went inside to register, pick up our maps, and then we were on our way! There were 20 flags placed around the park and we had to find as many as possible using a map and compass. To verify that we actually found the flag, we had to use an orienteering punch to punch holes in our maps. Since it was Halloween themed, there were treats at some of the flags so there was additional incentive to make it to all of them.

As soon as we received our maps, we planned out our route and decided to go big. We were given a 2.5 hour time frame and figured that it wouldn’t take us long to find all of the flags…

However, we quickly realized that finding the flags wouldn’t be as straightforward as we had envisioned. Some of them were a bit tricky to find and, because of the rain we had received in the days leading up to the event, it involved quite a bit of walking through marshy bogs. But it was worth it for the pride. And the treats… even when the treats were apples.

We had a great time looking for the flags and exploring the area. The fall colours were beautiful and the temperature was perfect, even though it was a bit misty. However, a few flags were particularly hard to find and we ended up back-tracking on a couple of occasions.

In total, it took us 2 hours and 20 minutes to punch our maps at all of the flags and make it back to the lodge. Since it took us a while, we had figured that we would be one of the last groups to return, but it turns out that we were only the third group to come back after finding all of the flags!

Overall, it was a great event. It was very well organized and at a cost of only $2 per person, it’s hard to beat! Especially because we definitely each ate more than $2 worth of food along the way. Way more.

We finished up our adventure with a drink and some snacks at the Duke when we got back into town. Here are some more pictures from our Trick or Treat orienteering experience: